Derek Sanderson Didn't Always Smoke and Pray at the Same Time

Now 66, Sanderson revisits the days of being one of the baddest Bruins in town.

To write a truly complete autobiography, Derek Sanderson probably wouldâve needed 5,000 pages. Among other things, the mustached former Boston Bruin, now 66, won Stanley Cup rings in 1970 and â72, became the highest-paid athlete in the world, drove a Rolls-Royce, opened a bar with Joe Namath (and also invested in Daisy Buchananâs on Newbury Street), did a lot of drugs, and eventually drank his way out of hockey and into disrepair.

âI should be in jail or dead,â the long-sober Sanderson, whoâs now a financial adviser, said last week. âBy the grace of God … he protects fools and drunks.â

Itâs fitting then that the front cover of Crossing the Line features a photograph of the then 24-year-old Sanderson in which heâs squinting, smoking, and mockingly praying. âEverybody in hockey at that time smoked in the [dressing] room,â said Sanderson, whose brand at the time was Export âA.â âYou could smoke two [cigarettes] between periods if you didnât undo your skates.â

The, um, unique portrait, which today might cause an athleteâs publicist to spontaneously combust, actually first graced the cover of the January 1971 issue of Boston under the headline âThe Beatification of Derek Sandersonâ:

The accompanying profile by Jon Klarfeld includes several gems. Like this:

Sandersonâs problems with hockey fans arenât confined to those who donât like him. His loyal rooters also cause him some degree of grief. âBobby Orr gets all the mature fans,â he complains. âI get all the freaks.â

Do you think marijuana should be legalized? Again he takes the Fifth Amendment.

Sanderson leans forward in his chair again. âHey,â he says, âput it in your story just like that. Then people won’t know whether I do or I don’t.â

The story behind the cover photo differs slightly depending on who tells it. Whatâs certain is that it was taken by photographer John van-Schalkwyk (who professionally went by John van-S.) at his studio on Washington Street, near the old Jordan Marsh building. The day of the shoot, van-Schalkwyk said, Sanderson was in no condition to be photographed. âWhen he came down to the studio, he was pretty drunk,â van-Schalkwyk said. âWe couldnât work with him. We drove him home.â The next morning, however, Sanderson was in better shape. On Day 2, he worked with van-Schalkwyk until at least the middle of the afternoon.

According to Sanderson, the money shot was actually a candid outtake, captured with Polaroid film after van-Schalkwyk finally granted his subject a smoke break. Sanderson said he was so happy, he put his hands together and sarcastically thanked God. According to van-Schalkwyk, the pose was planned. By who? He’s not sure. Maybe the art director. But he does vividly remember taking the resulting photo with a Hasselblad 500C camera loaded with Ektachrome film.

The picture ended up on the Boston cover, and to this day, Sanderson still signs copies of it. Currently, van-Schalkwyk is enjoying retirement in Nova Scotia. To his surprise, the publisher of Crossing the Line recently contacted him about licensing the Sanderson photo. And so a bizarre, almost 42-year-old portrait of a smoking, praying pro hockey player lives on. Thank God for that.